May 04 2016

Amoeba Kollektiv is a collaboration between
Serinyà, Hans Malm, and Vendela Grundell. In our first joint
work – Community Transit – we challenge the practice
and format of the group exhibition, and explore how to convey a
shared journey. Three separate series overlap in a continuous flow,
creating memories of a new journey taken by the viewer. Our shared
story becomes greater than its parts, as we ask: how does a
collective process mirror or affect our individual eyes and our
individual images?

Into this process, we bring images that share a sense of
travel. Serinyà's work Translocation is a concrete journey
from A to B that also entails a movement from one life phase to
another. In Malm's suite Der Mensch in der Maschine, he documents a fixed place where
large flows of commuters pass by every day. In Grundell's series
Born Into Color, the step between different states of mind and
experience is captured through the color, shade and light shifting
in everyday rooms. These three materials complement each other like
variations on a theme of transit. They also share a drive for what
a journey is – to choose a direction, set something in
motion, break structures and build anew. What happens when our
journeys cross, when a new map of a new territory takes shape?

Our name – Amoeba – signals that we shape our
collaboration in relation to the current space: a physical gallery,
a publication, a geographical location, a time slot, or some other
limitation that becomes a frame or stage for our work. In the
spring of 2014, we participated in the group exhibition The Unknown
(Det okända) initiated by Serinyà as part of his
exhibition concept 6T Gallery – six intense hours in a 1625
sqm garage. After the exhibition, the three of us continued talking
about how this kind of intervention is an enriching challenge not
only for our own photographic work but also for a photography field
where solo masters and super groups – as well as traditional
forms of display – abound. We lower our garde, leaving
autonomy aside to cross-fertilize our different ways of seeing and
doing photography. Here, those differences mix to create a new
space.